are indeed hard to find, and sell for nearly MSRP when you can find them. I'm in MA, and can locate some Jettas, and the occasional Golf, but not equipped as I would prefer. Tough market all of a sudden.

In my search, I noticed most dealers has between 2 and 10 or so TDI's total, so finding the model, body style, and equipment level that you are looking for can be a challenge. What I did was search for every dealer within a 50 mile radius of my city, and then went to each website and looked at their inventory. Saves a lot of time, although their descriptions are rather minimal. I was able to find exactly what I was looking for except for color at the closest one, believe it or not. Jetta 5-speed GLS with Monsoon & Cold Weather. Ideally I would have gotten Blue Lagoon, but I like Baltic Green too. :-)

There is dealer near Boston that is selling 2002 TDI at $1150 under invoice and 2003 at $100 over. They have at least 9 2002 Golf. It is not uncommon for a VW dealer not to have the exact car you want but they can usually get one. Fair price is between invoice and MSRP in my opinion. There is $1250 cash to dealer incentive on all 2002 TDI so if you can find one the prices are the best in 3 years. If you do a search for TDI in google you will find a helpful webpage that can answer your TDI questions.

There used to be a place in Philly where you can get Bio...but now it's reserved only for fleet sales.

We did have a discussion about VWoA warranties with B100 or B20 use, on that specific site a while back. Basically, (and I added more fuel to the flame, by calling VWoA myself)...if the problem was caused by Biodiesel...kiss your warranty goodbye. THe reason I got from VWoA, which is plausible, is the lack of quality control standards in the US, even though there is a ASTM standard for biodiesel, both B100 and B20. Even with the ASTM standard, no one is enforcing it. In germany, for example, there's only about 3 suppliers of biodiesel, and they are federally regulated, TUV standards or something for quality control, thus VWaG supports biodiesel there. Another example is there were people who got bad batches of "yellow brand" biodiesel and had problems with it. It was a backyard operation, which whatever biodiesel the guy had leftover (from farming equipment) he sold. Some got a bad batch, others didn't.

There are people on that site, and others around the country who make Biodiesel themselves and used it, successfully. If you do a search on the Sierra Club, there was a member who did a demonstration at an Earth Day on making your own Biodiesel, for her Golf TDI.

If you're not an apartment dweller like I am, and have a garage, you can get B100 delivered to your home like natescape.

There isn't a better commuter car on the road than the TDI. It's fun and efficient as all heck. And nothing quite like going 600-700 miles between fill-ups (or, in the case of us Passat owners, 800+ miles).

Throw in a chip, and you could almost close your eyes and think you were in a 1.8T. Except, of course, that the fuel meter drops much slower...

Where in MA can you buy biodiesel? Is it readily available? A work buddy has ordered a TDI Jetta, and I'm considering a TDI Golf. (Actually, I'm convinced, but still tugging the wife into my way of thinking...)

There is only one place that I know of in Mass that you can get bio, its B20 (20% bio, 80% DieselOne, which is premium diesel), and its located in Chelsea. The price when I went about a month ago was 1.599, which is about $0.20 higher than I usually pay at the Hess and Shell that I fill up at.

You will save money up front, but will have to replace your injectors, etc., fairly quickly. Jet fuel lacks the lubricity the engine needs.

The classic problem in boat engines with thin fuel is burning up fuel pumps. Cruising sailboats in the Carribean often end up getting fuel that's quite a bit thinner than diesel. The known fix is to add in some 2 cycle outboard motor oil. I'm not sure why anybody would want to burn jet fuel. Anyplace I've ever been it's taxed like crazy. I run marine diesel in my boat and I pay the same as I pay for my home heating oil since there's no tax on it.

I don't know what was wrong with their car, but it must have been something, unless they were driving with their foot to the floor at all times. I have a 5-speed, so my gas mileage should be ~5 mpg higher, but even with that adjustment I do better. My average mileage has been 46. My worst was 42, and my best was yesterday when I filled up, 51 mpg!!

I don't try very hard to get good mileage, I frequently use the AC, I tend to go 75-80 mph on my way to work, and frequently launch myself pretty hard out of the many tollbooths that I unfortunately pass through every day.

I've been trying to figure out why Edmunds always gets poor mileage in the TDI. Their long term test beetle should have gotten well over 40 MPG the entire time they had it. This new review is infuritating, since they chose to evaluate an automatic tranny. They sap power and mileage from these engines. I've got a 5-speed Golf, and have been getting 46-48 MPG. When it was new, it didn't do quite as well as it does now, but it still got 42-44. And I drive the car fairly hard. They've gotta be doing something wrong, or they may figure mileage incorrectly.

Plus, they always talk about how diesels are polluters without doing any research on the actual numbers. The TDI engine pollutes less overall than an equivalent gasoline engine. The only thing the US needs to decrease diesel emmisions overall is cleaner fuel.

46 mpg average in my 5spd Jetta Wagon TDI over 6800 miles. I expect the mileage to improve as the car breaks in more. 41 mpg average over 16,700 miles in my Golf TDI automatic. The last six thousand miles averaged 43 mpg. I have no idea how you can drive the TDI in such a manner as to get 32 mpg like Edmunds did. I drive my cars with respect and do not beat on them but I do drive them aggressively. People who tow boats and other trailers with their TDI still get in high 30's and low 40's mpg. There is a problem with the car, the drivers or the person who calculated the mileage on the Edmunds review in order to get 32 mpg. Most of the driving with my TDI's has been my commute to work which is 50 miles per day and a mix of 70 mph interstate and stop and go city driving.

I drive pretty aggressively as well in my car. I have a 1.8T Jetta Tiptronic. I usually average 23-25mpg in it, with mostly highway driving. That seems low to me, but I don't know what would cause it.

Also, I rented an Echo for one day a couple of months ago. Used AC the entire time, drove pretty fast. I only drove 100 miles, but used 4 gallons of fuel (25mpg average). If I had ran a whole tank, perhaps I would have gotten better results, I don't know. But it seemed to me the mileage still would have been higher.

I have consistently gotten in the 40s. Except for my very first tank (where I think I filled up wrong at a truck pump), I've never dipped below 40 and have never broken 48.

The biggest issue with test drives that either kill MPG or complain that the car is slow is that they drive the car wrong. If the driver shifts at 3500 (max), then they'll get good MPG and excellent drivability.

As for biodiesel, I get 55-gallon drums of b100 shipped to my house from Burke Oil (the folks who run the b20 station in Chelsea). There are lots of details about Burke, biodiesel, and a fairly active biodiesel group at http://www.biodieselnow.com (mods, feel free to remove the link if you so desire).

The cost for b100 delivered, with all taxes, is a hair under $3/gallon. If that's too expensive, you could get the 50 gallons and run a lower percentage (blend your own b100 into regular and run b20, b50, whatever).

Nobody in the TDIclub could figure out how the reviewer got such lousy mileage. This was a stock TDI motor, where as there are people with lead feet, chipped, uprated injectors, etc. that got better mileage with an automatic.

Though one thing we know, the mileage gets better after about 10,000 miles.

Hey ekkoh99, the edmunds staffers already did a long term test drive of a New Beetle TDI, and they got lousy mileage in that too. That's why I'm wondering what they do incorrectly. There should be no way to even get below 40 MPG with a TDI engine and a 5-speed. What stinks is a lot of people read their reviews, and with their poor mileage figures, a lot of people are going to think that the TDI's don't really get the excellent mileage that they do.